July 24, 2014 Comments Off on Effects Of Child Abuse And Neglect On The Brain, Man Charged With Child Abuse in Kenya

Effects Of Child Abuse And Neglect On The Brain Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Hundreds of thousands of children suffer from neglect, abuse and trauma during their early years. Many of the psychological consequences are well known, but it’s becoming increasingly clear just how damaging they are to the developing brain.

– He’s Out! International intervention frees Canadian Prisoner of Conscience Steve Finney
– Political Persecution of Canadian activist Steve Finney in Ontario court to be investigated by International Human Rights Observers
– Dave Lee Travis Charged With Two More Offences
– Traumatic events do not occur at random
– Effects of child abuse can last a lifetime

Kitchener, Ontario: The courage and resolve of Steve Finney himself, and phone calls from the ITCCS and a United Nations non-governmental body to the Ontario government, stopped cold an attempt by local judges and police to silence Finney and his campaign to confront child trafficking in Kitchener, Ontario.

Finney was released this afternoon in a sudden about-face by local authorities less than two hours after Ontario Attorney General John Gerretsen spoke with two human rights officials who have monitored Finney’s unlawful arrest and imprisonment.

According to one of these officials, who is a legal advisor to the ITCCS in Brussels,
“We can’t disclose the conversation we had with the Attorney General, out of mutual agreement with Mr. Gerretsen. But I can tell you that we informed him that we were preparing a motion at the United Nations to censure his government for its treatment of Mr. Finney. We were also going to name Finney as a prisoner of conscience if he wasn’t released, since he was clearly incarcerated because of his political beliefs.”

itccs.orgPolitical Persecution of Canadian activist Steve Finney in Ontario court to be investigated by International Human Rights Observers

Finney may be named as a Prisoner of Conscience and Political Prisoner Posted on October 02, 2013 by itccs

Brussels: Steve Finney, the unlawfully jailed Canadian leader of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS), was told yesterday by a Kitchener, Ontario court judge that he won’t be released on bail unless he disassociates himself from the Tribunal.

Ontario Court of Justice magistrate Michael Cuthbertson informed Finney through Duty Counsel Dave Woodbeck that no-one associated with the ITCCS would be allowed to post bail for him, and neither should Finney himself remain active with the ITCCS if he wished to “avoid another thirty days in jail”.

Dave Lee Travis Charged With Two More Offences The Huffington Post UK 01/10/2013

DJ Dave Lee Travis has been further charged with two offences of indecent assault on a woman aged over 16 between January 1 1992 and December 31 1993.
The 68-year-old, whose real name is David Patrick Griffin, has been accused of assaulting a woman aged over 16 between January 1 1992 and December 31 1993, Scotland Yard said.

Travis, of Mentmore, in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, has already appeared in court to face 12 counts, including indecent assault and sexual assault.

Dr. Katie McLaughlin is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. She received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology and in Epidemiology and Public Health from Yale University in 2008. Her research seeks to identify psychological and neurobiological mechanisms linking child trauma exposure to the onset of psychopathology in children and adolescents. Today, Katie writes about what population-based data can tell us about trauma in U.S. children and adolescents….

We sought to understand how common traumatic experiences are in the lives of U.S. youths by conducting a study examining trauma exposure and PTSD in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A), a nationally-representative sample of 6,483 adolescents aged 13-17. This study is the largest population-based study examining trauma exposure and PTSD in U.S. youths, and the findings reveal trauma and PTSD are significant public health problems in this population….

Trauma Exposure is Pervasive among U.S. Youths
A majority of U.S. youths have experienced a traumatic event by the time they reach adolescence. Sixty-two percent of teenagers have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, including interpersonal violence, serious injuries, natural disasters and death of a loved one, and 19 percent have experienced three or more such events. The prevalence of trauma exposure among children and adolescents is nearly as high as the prevalence in adults based on similar population-based studies.

Traumatic Events do not Occur at Random
Some types of trauma occur more frequently to younger children, including physical abuse by a caregiver, witnessing domestic violence, and kidnapping. Approximately half of all children who will experience these types of trauma in their lifetime have been exposed before the age of 8.http://trauma-recovery.net/2013/09/30/traumatic-events-do-not-occur-at-random

Objective
Although exposure to potentially traumatic experiences (PTEs) is common among youths in the United States, information on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) risk associated with PTEs is limited. We estimate lifetime prevalence of exposure to PTEs and PTSD, PTE-specific risk of PTSD, and associations of sociodemographics and temporally prior DSM-IV disorders with PTE exposure, PTSD given exposure, and PTSD recovery among U.S. adolescents.

Method
Data were drawn from 6,483 adolescent–parent pairs in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A), a national survey of adolescents aged 13 through 17 years. Lifetime exposure to interpersonal violence, accidents/injuries, network/witnessing, and other PTEs was assessed along with DSM-IV PTSD and other distress, fear, behavior, and substance disorders.

Results
A majority (61.8%) of adolescents experienced a lifetime PTE. Lifetime prevalence of DSM-IV PTSD was 4.7% and was significantly higher among females (7.3%) than among males (2.2%). Exposure to PTEs, particularly interpersonal violence, was highest among adolescents not living with both biological parents and with pre-existing behavior disorders. Conditional probability of PTSD was highest for PTEs involving interpersonal violence. Predictors of PTSD among PTE-exposed adolescents included female gender, prior PTE exposure, and pre-existing fear and distress disorders. One-third (33.0%) of adolescents with lifetime PTSD continued to meet criteria within 30 days of interview. Poverty, U.S. nativity, bipolar disorder, and PTE exposure occurring after the focal trauma predicted nonrecovery….http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567%2813%2900338-9/abstract

Effects of child abuse can last a lifetime: Watch the ‘still face’ experiment to see why
By Brigid Schulte, Published: September 16, 2013

In one of the most sobering findings, the report highlighted that advances in brain research now show that child abuse and neglect damages not only in the way a developing child’s brain functions, but changes the actual structure of the brain itself, in such a way that makes clear thinking, controlling emotions and impulses and forming healthy social relationships more difficult…..

Some infants, however, become so distressed that that they’re unable to console themselves. Tronick and other researchers have found that neglect leads to increases in the heart rate, a flush of the stress hormone cortisol and to cell death in key regions of the brain.

In recent studies, Tronick and colleagues in Milan, have found that four-month-old infants exposed to the still face will remember it two weeks later, rapidly showing physiological changes to negative responses that infants exposed to it for the first time do not….

In studies of infants at orphanages who are fed and clothed, but not held, talked to or played with have found that some neglected children, literally, fail to grow. “Some of them actually died,” he said….

September 16, 2013 Comments Off on Lifetime effects of child abuse, Mind-Control Survivors Breaking Their Silence

New report finds that effects of child abuse and neglect, if untreated, can last a lifetime
By Brigid Schulte, Published: September 12, 2013

In the first major study of child abuse and neglect in 20 years, researchers with the National Academy of Sciences reported Thursday that the damaging consequences of abuse can not only reshape a child’s brain but also last a lifetime.

Untreated, the effects of child abuse and neglect, the researchers found, can profoundly influence victims’ physical and mental health, their ability to control emotions and impulses, their achievement in school, and the relationships they form as children and as adults.

The researchers recommended an “immediate, coordinated” national strategy to better understand, treat and prevent child abuse and neglect, noting that each year, abuse and neglect costs an estimated $80 billion in the direct costs of hospitalization, law enforcement and child welfare and the indirect costs of special education, juvenile and adult criminal justice, adult homelessness, and lost work productivity….

The report, produced at the request of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that while rates of physical and sexual child abuse have declined in the past 20 years, rates of emotional and psychological abuse, the kind that can produce the most serious long-lasting -effects, have increased. Rates of neglect have held fairly steady. Researchers said they do not know why….

Every year, child-protection agencies receive 3 million referrals for child abuse and neglect involving about 6 million children, the report found, though with unreported instances, the actual number is probably much higher, the researchers said. And, the report noted, about 80 percent of the children in investigated abuse and neglect cases are not removed from the home.

Survivors of the CIA mind-control program are speaking out about their childhood torture. They are outraged that as children, they were emotionally, physically and sexually abused by US government and military employees in brainwashing experiments, claim our tax payer dollars are still being used to exploit children and are requesting a Congressional investigation.

The petition requesting Congress for an investigation is sponsored by a coalition of child abuse advocates: Neil Brick, Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today (SMART http://ritualabuse.us ), Judy Byington, Child Abuse Recovery (CAR ttp:///www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com ) and Kevin Annett, International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS http://ww.itccs.org .

Gabon Senator Arrested in Ritual Killing Case 09 Jun 2013 REUTERS
A member of Gabon’s senate has been arrested in an investigation into the ritual killing of a 12-year-old girl in the central African nation four years ago, the first time a senior politician has been detained in such a case.

Rising public anger at a spate of ritual killings in Gabon, an oil-rich former French colony on the Gulf of Guinea, sparked a march by thousands of people in the capital Libreville last month after mutilated bodies washed up on beaches, reports Reuters.

President Ali Bongo promised the protesters that anyone convicted of such killings would be jailed for life.

Senator Gabriel Eyeghe Ekomie, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in December, was arrested on Friday after failing to appear before a court on May 31, his lawyer said.

Specific Changes in Brain Structure After Different Forms of Child Abuse
June 1, 2013 — Different forms of childhood abuse increase the risk for mental illness as well as sexual dysfunction in adulthood, but little has been known about how that happens. An international team of researchers, including the Miller School’s Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., Leonard M. Miller Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has discovered a neural basis for this association. The study, published in the June 1 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, shows that sexually abused and emotionally mistreated children exhibit specific and differential changes in the architecture of their brain that reflect the nature of the mistreatment.

Researchers have known that victims of childhood abuse often suffer from psychiatric disorders later in life, including sexual dysfunction following sexual abuse. The underlying mechanisms mediating this association have been poorly understood. Nemeroff and a group of scientists led by Christine Heim, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology at Charité University of Medicine Berlin, and Jens Pruessner, Ph.D., Director of the McGill Center for Studies in Aging at McGill University in Montreal, hypothesized that cortical changes during segments of mistreatment played a role. To study these potential changes, the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the brains of 51 adult women who were exposed to various forms of childhood abuse.

LONDON — Scotland Yard and Britain’s leading child welfare group drew a horrific picture of more than 200 cases of sexual abuse of victims as young as 8 by the BBC host Jimmy Savile in a report released on Friday, and prosecutors admitted for the first time that “shortcomings” in interviewing some of the victims allowed Mr. Savile to escape prosecution before his death at the age of 84 in 2011.

The 37-page report, jointly written by the police and the welfare group, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, depicted a pattern of abuse in broadcast studios, hospitals, homes for the mentally disabled and other places of care for the vulnerable. It documented 23 offenses committed at the BBC’s television center in London during Mr. Savile’s 40 years there, including one assault during the taping of the last episode of his “Top of the Pops” show in 2006 — when the performer was nearing 80.

Only one location, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, about 40 miles northwest of London, with 24 attacks, was the site of more offenses than the BBC was. Mr. Savile maintained living quarters and an office at the hospital and was free to roam it as an honorary porter after raising millions of pounds with a charitable appeal for its spinal injuries unit.

The report, which referred to the entertainer in criminal fashion as James Wilson Vincent Savile, said the police had received more than 450 individual complaints against Mr. Savile, ranging from groping to forced oral sex and rape, with many of the allegations still awaiting police investigation. It gave a breakdown showing that the preponderance of the victims, 73 percent, were younger than 18, with the largest group 13 to 16 years old. Over all, the report said, 82 percent of the victims were female…. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/europe/jimmy-savile-sexual-abuse-scandal-report.html

Memoir — From the January 2013 issueSliver of Sky Confronting the trauma of sexual abuse
By Barry Lopez

One day in the fall of 1938, a man named Harry Shier entered the operating room of a Toronto hospital and began an appendectomy procedure on a prepubescent boy. He was not a trained surgeon; he nearly botched the operation, and the boy’s parents reacted angrily. Suspicions about Shier’s medical credentials had already surfaced among operating-room nurses, and the hospital, aware of other complaints related to Shier’s groin-area operations on young boys, opened a formal investigation. By the time the hospital board determined that both his medical degree, from a European university, and his European letters of reference were fraudulent, Harry Shier had departed for the United States.

A few years later, a police officer in Denver caught Shier raping a boy in the front seat of his automobile. Shier spent a year in prison and then slipped out of Colorado. In the late 1940s, he surfaced in North Hollywood, California, as the director of a sanitarium where he supervised the treatment of people with addictions, primarily alcoholics….http://harpers.org/archive/2013/01/sliver-of-sky/

In ‘Sliver Of Sky,’ Barry Lopez Confronts Childhood Sexual Abuse
January 10, 2013
Barry Lopez is known for writing about the natural world. His books include Arctic Dreams and Of Wolves and Men, where he explores the relationship between the physical landscape and human culture. But in a new essay in the January issue of Harper’s Magazine, Lopez writes that he was sexually molested by a family friend when he was a boy, and says the man was never brought to justice.

October 31, 2012 Comments Off on Jimmy Savile caused concern with behaviour on visits to Prince Charles, Child abuse causes damage to the brain

Jimmy Savile caused concern with behaviour on visits to Prince Charles
Former royal aide says TV presenter would greet young female assistants at St James’s Palace by ‘rubbing lips up their arms’
Robert Booth The Guardian, Monday 29 October 2012

A former senior royal aide has revealed that Jimmy Savile’s behaviour when he visited Prince Charles’s official home at St James’ Palace was a cause for “concern and suspicion”.

Dickie Arbiter, who handled media relations for the Prince and Princess of Wales while spokesman for the Queen between 1988 and 2000, said the suspected paedophile TV presenter used to rub his lips up the arms of Prince Charles’s young female assistants as a greeting.

Savile is understood to have visited Prince Charles’s official London residence several times in the late 1980s when he was acting as a kind of marriage counsellor between Charles and Princess Diana. A spokesman for the Prince of Wales confirmed the prince and Savile formed a relationship in the late 1970s after coming together through their work with wheelchair sports charities. Charles led tributes to Savile when he died a year ago.

“He would walk into the office and do the rounds of the young ladies taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms if they were wearing short sleeves,” Arbiter said of Savile. “If it was summer [and their arms were bare] his bottom lip would curl out and he would run it up their arms. This was at St James’s Palace. The women were in their mid to late 20s doing typing and secretarial work.”

Arbiter did not raise his concerns formally and there is no suggestion Savile committed any crimes while on royal premises or when he was with Prince Charles on numerous occasions from the 1970s onwards. But the concern over his behaviour expressed by a senior aide will raise questions over how Savile, who is now under investigation in relation to child abuse involving 300 potential victims, managed to develop such a long-standing relationship with the heir to the throne….

Charles reportedly sent him a box of cigars and a pair of gold cufflinks on his 80th birthday with a note that read: “Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.”

Neurologists have discovered that the way children are treated in their early years can have a remarkable impact on their brain development.

These two images are brain scans of two three-year-old children. The brain on the left is much bigger and contains fewer dark “fuzzy” areas and less spots, reports the UK’s Telegraph.

The brain on the right is less developed in some fundamental areas, and neurologists say that child will become an adult who is less intelligent, less empathetic and more likely to be unemployed or get involved in drugs and crime than the other child.

While first glance might have people assuming a serious accident or illness must be responsible for the huge discrepancies, the truth is that the child on the right was neglected and abused by its mother, while the child on the left was raised in a loving, supportive home.

Professor Allan Schore, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) told the The Telegraph that babies rely on a strong bond with their mothers for healthy brain development in their first two years.

“The development of cerebral circuits depends on it,” he said.

And with 80 per cent of brain cells grown in the first two years of life –– problems in that development can affect people for life.

Dr Marc Seal, a research scientist at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, is doing similar research.

“If you deprive a child of affection and social contact and basic food, they will be stunted physically –– their brains will be smaller and so will their bodies,” he said.

September 18, 2012 Comments Off on Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, ITCCS Kevin Annett update, Social Interaction in Early Life

articles:
– Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, files show
– A paper trail of abuse
– Urgent Update from the International Common Law Court of Justice
– Social Interaction in Early Life Affects Wiring to the Frontal Lobes

Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, files show

When volunteers and employees were suspected of sexually abusing children, Boy Scout officials often didn’t tell police, files from 1970-91 reveal. In many cases they sought to hide the situation.

By Kim Christensen and Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times

September 16, 2012

Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public.

A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign — and helped many cover their tracks.

Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, “chronic brain dysfunction” and duties at a Shakespeare festival.

As The Times reported in August, the blacklist often didn’t work: Men expelled for alleged abuses slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again. Now, a more extensive review has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps.

In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from boys, parents, staff members or anonymous tips.

In about 400 of those cases — 80% — there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found.

A paper trail of abuse
Since at least 1919, the Boy Scouts of America has maintained “ineligible volunteer” files intended to keep sexual abusers, among others, out of its ranks. The records have been closely held by the Scouts, which contends that confidentiality is essential to protect victims, witnesses and anyone falsely accused.

The Times reviewed about 1,600 of the files dating from 1970 to 1991. In hundreds of cases, sexual abuse was not reported to law enforcement, and Scout officials at times actively hid it from parents and the public. In at least 50 cases, the Boy Scouts expelled men for alleged sexual abuse, only to discover later that they had reentered the Scouts and were again accused of molesting.

Here are files from some of those cases. The Times has redacted victims’ names and other identifying information. Some files include explicit accounts of sexual abuse.

Urgent Update from the International Common Law Court of Justice
Posted on September 17, 2012 by itccs

This is September 17, 2012, and I’m Kevin Annett with the International Common Law Court of Justice.

Today, the Prosecutor’s Office of our Court is issuing Public Summonses to thirty two officials of church and state around the world, charging them with criminal offenses and summoning them to appear in our court. This Summons and the names and positions of these officials will be read today so that the world is able to follow these historic proceedings.

This Summons has particular force right now because of the refusal of the named churches and persons to respond this week to ten measures of justice demanded of them by their victims – and by a consequential Banishment Proclamation that has been issued against these churches by organizations of abuse survivors around the world.

Social Interaction in Early Life Affects Wiring to the Frontal Lobes
09/13/2012 Dr. Douglas Fields – Neurobiologist and author, ‘The Other Brain’ GET UPDATES FROM Dr. Douglas Fields

A study published in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Science shows that social interaction during a critical period of early life has irreversible effects on maturation of connections to the frontal lobes of the brain, disrupting social interactions and cognitive ability into adulthood. Children suffering severe neglect are known to have cognitive dysfunctions and impairments in social interaction as adults, but the mechanisms were not understood.

Situated behind the forehead, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for complex analysis, abstract thought, motivation, and controlling socially correct behaviors. Interestingly, connections from other brain regions to the prefrontal cortex are not fully developed until the early 20s. A team led by neurobiologist Gabriel Corfas at the Children’s Hospital in Boston reared mice in isolated cages for two weeks after they were weaned from their mothers. When these animals reached adulthood, the nerve fibers (axons) connecting to the prefrontal cortex had a thinner coating of electrical insulation (myelin) than in mice reared in standard cages. Myelin insulation, wrapped around axons like electrical tape, greatly increases the transmission speed of nerve impulses. Slower transmission of information to the frontal cortex could degrade performance of this critical brain region. Indeed, behavioral experiments showed that these animals had poor working memory and impaired social interaction as adults….

“The findings make sense and are consistent with what we’ve observed in clinical studies on effects of early stress on the brain,” says Martin Teicher, a neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard University. Using MRI brain imaging, Teicher and his colleagues have found that early life stresses, including childhood sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence, and experiencing verbal abuse from parents or peers, affect the structure of the prefrontal cortex and disrupt fiber connections (called white matter) to this and other brain regions. This new study is a major advance, Teicher says, because human brain imaging can only provide correlations, but animal experiments can demonstrate causation and help identify the underlying mechanisms.

Many alterations in brain tissue could produce the differences seen by MRI in children suffering neglect, but by removing the tissue and examining it under an electron microscope, Corfas and colleagues were able to prove that indeed myelin was thinner on these axons in socially isolated mice. What’s more, they were able to identify the cellular and molecular mechanism responsible for the thinner myelin and then manipulate them to test whether thinner myelin was sufficient to cause the behavioral effects seen after isolation….

Corfas notes that white matter disruptions in this brain region have been related to schizophrenia, and variations in the gene for the neuregulin-1 receptor are also associated with the disorder. Mutation in this gene is not enough to cause disease, but Corfas speculates that an interaction between variants of this gene and environmental stresses could contribute to schizophrenia and to other neuropsychiatric disorders such as PTSD, depression, or anxiety disorders. “We are not saying that isolation is producing schizophrenia,” he says. “Rather that people with alterations in the neuregulin genes could be more sensitive to environmental stresses that could cause defects in myelination and contribute to neuropsychiatric disorders.” Regardless, even in individuals with no genetic problems, connections to the frontal lobes will not develop normally without social interaction in early life.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-douglas-fields/social-interaction-early-life-frontal-lobes_b_1864234.html